Printed glucose sensors were one of the earliest and most important markets for printed electronics. The billion-dollar market featured products that were screen printed and made home diabetes testing easier and more cost effective.

The healthcare field continues to draw interest from major corporations, entrepreneurs and researchers alike, who see the opportunity to develop products that will make patients’ lives easier.

Flexible, hybrid and printed electronics have unique benefits that can drive gains in the healthcare market, whether it is sensors, wearables or other products. To begin with, the flexible nature of the technology lends itself to the human body.

“Flexible electronics by virtue of not being linear or rectangular, obviously is a natural fit for something on the human body,” said Dr. Melissa Grupen-Shemansky, CTO, flexible electronics and advanced packaging for SEMI. “It doesn’t necessarily have to stretch but there are very few places in the human body that doesn’t curve.”

Tekscan CTO Robert Podoloff said that improving the patient’s experience is key to flexible electronics.

“In recent years, we’ve begun seeing a significant shift toward the development of medical devices that put the patient experience at the forefront of the design,” Podoloff said. “More and more patients are electing treatments that allow them to treat themselves with greater convenience, and fewer visits to their doctor or therapist. Devices like wearable auto-injectors, implantable health monitors, and other home-use therapies are helping to answer these demands for smart-connected, IoT-style medical technologies.

“Sensing technologies of all kinds play important roles in the development of these types of innovations,” added Podoloff. “In general, though, most medical devices or systems require a change in force or pressure to function. These changes in force can be made manually by a physician or by their patient, but also made automatically by a device itself. This is why minimally-invasive force- and pressure-sensing technologies have so many applications to advance medical devices, and also their production or manufacturing methods.”

Podoloff mentioned a few examples of how sensors can be applied in healthcare.

“We are a supplier of sensors to a major glucose pump manufacture and in that case, we are a safety device, an occlusal sensor,” said Podoloff. “If the tube swells because of a blockage, it will sense the occlusion. Another place we are used is a knee replacement. You want to make sure the knee is balanced – we can look at the force to adjust that the knee is balanced.”

The ability to constantly monitor a patient in real time is another advantage.

“Obviously, doctor-patient contact will always be an important part of any medical treatment process,” Podoloff said. “However, we live in a data-driven world, and when you step back and think about it, there’s a lot of important data about a treatment process that is not currently being captured by conventional treatment methods. Developing devices that can deliver these quantifiable insights can answer usability demands while improving treatment consistency, putting patients onto the fastest path to recovery.”

“Flexible electronics aligns itself so well to where the medical industry is heading, which is that your data follows you, whether you are sick or not, and it is tracking and baselining, measuring all the time and being cataloged,” Dr. Grupen-Shemansky noted. “That sphere of data will be connected to your broad group of health care providers, not just your primary physician but to your exercise trainer, a data analyst, and the data will be accessible by you, empowering you, the individual. You won’t have to take your phone and manually log your data.”

Trends in Healthcare

Where printed electronics in healthcare was once dominated by glucose strips, there are many new opportunities for flexible electronics.

“A variety of biosensors – seamlessly integrated into shirts and clothing – are appearing on the market and gaining a lot of interest at the tradeshows,” said Klaus Hecker, managing director of the OE-A. “Pressure-sensitive shoe-soles to optimize body movement in sports and rehabilitation are another hot topic.”

“There has been huge progress in healthcare, particularly with electronic skin patches and other digital health devices,” IDTechEx CEO Raghu Das observed. “Commercially, the biggest sectors are continuous glucose monitoring and heart rate monitoring.”

Roy Bjorlin of RWB INT LLC noted that sensor technologies specific to the healthcare field are likely outpacing industrial sensor applications.

“Where old-fashioned glucose test strips were considered the biggest application for printed sensors in the healthcare field, recent innovations in non-invasive personal testing devices for glucose monitoring are predicted to have a dramatic negative impact on glucose test strips. Other applications, however, including patient monitoring, station care management and other diagnostics, are seeing dramatic increases in new innovative materials and process.”

“Infection prevention is a hot topic, delivering a device that possesses a clean surface that is easily cleanable and doesn’t have crevices to capture dirt or particles as well as capacitive touch sensors for opening and closing doors in health care facilities,” said John Voultos, VP business development for Sheldahl Flexible Technologies Inc., a Flex Company. “We are also seeing quite a few new applications for home monitoring utilizing flexible printed circuits.”

“Healthcare, similar to the automotive industry, is still one of the largest drivers for flexible electronics,” said Nicholas Skelton, Brewer Science’s marketing manager. “The problem within healthcare, as compared to other industries, is the human factor associated with these devices and obtaining approval from the FDA. The most promising areas currently within the medical industry are wearable devices and testing equipment.”

“Healthcare was the first large volume user of printed electronics with the blood glucose test strip and is poised to be a driver going forward, especially with wearable health devices,” said Kerry Adams, market segment manager, DuPont. “New flexible, stretchable and washable inks and substrates allow comfortable, accurate wireless monitoring – pregnancy, new baby and ICU monitoring are all products emerging onto the market enabled by printed electronics.”

Wolfgang Mildner of MSWtech said that there are challenges that have to be overcome in the healthcare field.

“In addition to being thin, flexible and lightweight, these electronics are demanded also to be stretchable to build real wearable products,” Mildner noted. “More and more products are tested also with subsets of functionalities.”

“There are lots of applications regarding diabetes care that are wide-ranging,” said Bryan Germann, Aerosol Jet product manager at Optomec. “On-body medical devices have unique packaging and circuitry challenges to overcome.”

“Some medical device and equipment companies are exploring how they can use printed and flexible electronics technologies to enable new device form-factors, either aimed at miniaturizing their product or in some way enhancing the user experience with the product,” Stan Farnsworth, chief marketing officer for NovaCentrix, said.

John Hannafin, global product manager, Sun Chemical Advanced Materials, said that medical diagnostics and patient tracking appear to be leading the way.

“Noninvasive monitoring of glucose and some cardiac functions are creating a lot of demand,” Hannafin observed. “Medical device sensors will likely lead in terms of short-term growth followed closely by the consumer brand space. We are already seeing innovative new printed sensors in each of these markets already. Consumers are getting a taste for what’s possible and will drive further innovations.”